


Home

by Kahvi



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 14:16:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17102165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahvi/pseuds/Kahvi
Summary: Fighting bad guys is one thing, but Eddie is just not prepared for the nightmare that is the San Francisco real estate market. But everyone needs a home.





	Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [feverbeats](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverbeats/gifts).



“And this is the bedroom.”

“Yeah.” Eddie shrugged his shoulders, feeling too small, not just for his new jacket, but this entire set-up. “Yeah, that’s great.”

It was like this: Eddie had an apartment. A ridiculously sized, ridiculously nice apartment, in a frankly ridiculous part of the city. The people who owned his apartment, and to whom he was paying a ridiculously low rent, also owned the entire apartment building, renting its units to various people who worked for them, who were happy to not ask questions. Eddie did not work for them, but he’d once broken a story that broke up a rival - let’s, for the sake of argument say ‘organization’ - and suddenly, he’d gotten this offer. The lease for the last place he’d been living, a shithole in Oakland, was about to run out, and he’d… compromised on some principles.

But that was the old Eddie, and the new Eddie still needed a place to live.

Venom disagreed.

_We do not require shelter, Eddie. We are resilient._

“Yeah, well,” Eddie muttered under his breath, as the realtor excitedly hurried towards the walk-in closet, enthusing to herself and leaving him behind. “I like sleeping in an actual bed.”

_I do not require sleep._

“I do. Even if my body doesn’t, my mind does. We’ve talked about this. I don’t work like you; my brain needs a little downtime every now and then to keep from eating itself.”

_Eating…?_

“Figure of speech,” he hurried, as the realtor returned, beaming so hard that her supernaturally white teeth nearly blinded him. “Thank you,” he told her, “but I think this is a little over my budget.”

“I’m sure we could work something out,” she assured him, and Eddie twitched a smile. This kept happening. He was Eddie Brock; rogue journalist, internet phenomenon. People tended to equate fame with fortune. Those same people probably thought _controversial blogger_ was a job that paid actual money.

“All right,” he said. “Throw me a number.”

She did. He gave a counter-offer. Five minutes later, he was back on the BART. South San Francisco was definitely off the table.

 

* * *

 

 

_The old place was better._ Venom shifted restlessly inside of him, eager to get out once Eddie had let himself into their sparse motel room.

“No shit.” Eddie threw his key on the table. “It was also owned by criminals.”

_We could-_

“Don’t say we could eat them."

_Wasn’t going to._

“Sure you weren’t.” Just a bed, a tiny bathroom and a suspiciously-smelling closet. All of his things were in storage, and had been for the past month and a half. Anne was proud of him for what he was trying to do, which was both sweet and somehow depressing, as was Dan, which… was.

_We eat criminals._

“We try not to!” Eddie slumped down in the room’s single, uncomfortable chair. “All right,” he admitted. “Some criminals. All right? Not all of them. Not all the time.” He was almost certain the symbiote would keep the argument going, but instead it settled down, extending a tendril from Eddie’s back to the dish of chocolate candies on the bedside table. Scooping up a few, it slithered up to Eddie’s mouth, feeding him them one by one.

Eddie chewed, absent-mindedly. Why the hell was he trying to buy an apartment in San Francisco? Sure, in a lot of ways he was the patron saint of lost causes, but really? With the sort of mortgage he could get? It would be so easy to give up, and just float between cheap, shitty rental property to cheap, even shittier motel rooms and back again, perpetually. It would make Venom happy. It would make Eddie happy, truth be told. All he needed was his bike, and he was rapidly reaching the point where he would have to sell that, just to cover a fraction of a deposit. What was he trying to prove, exactly?

_No more chocolate, Eddie._

“What?” He looked up, caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and sighed. His lips and chin were smeared with the stuff, and his eyes were wild and shifting to silvery white. “Oh, for fuck’s sake…” He got up and ambled to the bathroom.

That. Yeah. He was trying to prove he was… more than that.

 

* * *

 

 

“Sorry, could you repeat that?”

It was a beautiful neighborhood, which hardly made sense when you looked at the property price. Something had to be wrong with this place, and as far as Eddie was concerned, the thin, blonde, carefully enunciating man who’d greeted him, making pains to assure Eddie that he was not a realtor, was the first warning sign.

“We have a strict no-pets policy,” the man repeated, eyeing Eddie over his glasses as though doubting that someone dressed like him would be familiar with the word policy.

“Uh, we?” Eddie looked down at his phone, where the ad was still open, from when he looked up the address. This wasn’t a rental, was it? If he bought the place, didn’t he get to decide what he did in there?

“Yes.” The man smirked, his estimation of Eddie’s intelligence seeming to drop another few notches. “The condo association. I’m the president.”

“What’s a condo association?” President? What the fuck was this?

The man told him. Eddie to great pains to thank him very politely, and headed back down the hill to where he’d parked.

_We don’t have pets, Eddie._

“I don’t want people telling me what to do in my own home. That’s some bullshit, man.”

_Bulls are too large to keep in an apartment._ The symbiote rippled just below his skin, where it lay, ready to envelop him as a set of motorcycle leathers. That was a joke. _A funny joke. You’re supposed to laugh now._

“Yeah, buddy. Real funny.” Eddie flipped the kickstand up and straddled his bike, looked around, and gave Venom the little internal squeeze of his muscles that let him know it was safe to come out. Venom flowed out of him, easing into the safe, second skin of a moto-suit, seamlessly forming gloves over his hands and boots over his sneakers. The slick, smooth movement through and across his fingers was so light it almost felt tender. Eddie inhaled, settling into themselves. They fit so well. The helmet came last, an actual helmet. He could walk around with the suit, if spotted, or even have it retract in full view without people noticing, but a full-face helmet that suddenly shrank into itself? There were limits.

_Food now, Eddie?_

“Yeah, we're right by the Castro. Let's go get some sushi.”

 

* * *

 

 

“No!” Eddie yanked his arm away, hissing to himself as they left the restaurant. The pink, wet tongue retracted. Thank fuck no one had seen them, though things tended to be a bit more laid back around here. “We don't do that. We don't lick people!”

_Sometimes you lick people._

Eddie flushed a deep red. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, as though they had been the ones to lick a thick, fat stripe up a poor woman's arm. “If they want me to, yeah!”

_He didn't want us to?_

“I kinda doubt she did.” His stomach rolled, uneasily. “Uh. That was a woman, dude. You gotta respect that.”

_Woman_. Venom seemed to consider. _With a penis._

“H… how could you possibly know she has a penis!” Eddie looked around, but the woman was long gone. Thankfully.

Venom did that thing where he rolled from side to side inside Eddie, the closest he came to a shrug. _Smells different._

“I… We are not having this conversation.”

_Tastes different too. Like you._

Eddie groaned. “Look, I'm not going to tell you aga-” someone tackled them from the side, spinning them into an alley.

 

* * *

 

 

There was a searing pain in his… everything. Eddie tried to move, and the trying hurt and the moving hurt too, just as much. He struggled to his feet, vision blurring. Why was it still hurting? Why did his chest feel weird? And his stomach. And…

No. No, no, no, no.

“Buddy?” His voice was hoarse and weak. “Venom?”

He didn’t wait for a reply; he didn’t have to. There was nothing inside him. The emptiness screamed at him, and he was screaming too, running out of the alley like a shot fired from badly aimed gun. He didn’t have stamina; that was them. Alone, he could run a good few hundred yards, but it’s not like he’d ever done cardio. All he did was lift. And now? Even a few feet hurt. Like his actual feet. Eddie ignored all of it.

He had to… had to do something. But what could he do; call someone? Anne? The police? Yes, hello, I’d like to report a part of me that was stolen. It’s an alien symbiote. Yes, I’ll hold.

Eddie kept running. His lungs were rasping and his legs were sore, but his mind was wild. How could this have happened? Whoever took Venom must be carrying him within themselves, because a symbiote couldn’t survive outside a host body for very long at all.

Assuming, of course, they cared about that.

There was always a voice inside his head now, and it was gone. And the world was so loud! People talking everywhere; in person, on the phone, listening to podcasts and music on bleeding headphones. No one was filtering for him anymore. Eddie tried not to scream.

Someone else did, not too far away. He ran towards them.

 

* * *

 

 

It had been so long since Eddie had seen Venom outside themselves. It was a shadow, not much more, a swirl of dark ink darting between people and cars and buildings, running, he realized suddenly, not at but away from. Away from… him? Fear jolted him, and he followed, pushing pedestrians, dodging bikes, ending up in a dead end street, trash cans piled high.

They weren’t alone.

There was a man between them, dressed in charcoal and nearly invisible in the low light of evening, and now his arm was outstretched, and changing, little flecks of metal sticking to it as he pointed it towards the cowering shape in the corner.

Eddie dove at it.

 

* * *

 

 

Sometimes, it took him like that. Eddie (no: Venom - not he, they; the difference was immediate and visceral and jarring and joyful) came to with their face leering into another angry, bearded one, which was upside down, because they were currently holding the person to whom it belonged by the ankles.

As always, this was disconcerting.

“WE WILL EAT YOU.”

_No, we won’t!_ Eddie tried to break through, but the symbiote part of them held him back. Like it was afraid he would leave again. His voice wasn’t breaking through. _It’s okay, buddy. I’m here now. It’s all right._

“Really? Just like that? You’re not even going to lick me first?”

No. Wait. That voice - that beard. Eddie pushed at Venom, angrily, dragging his face to the surface of their skin. It was, for some reason, always easier to remember people when he saw them with his own eyes. To Venom, all people were people. “Tony Stark,” he gasped, shaking Venom off his head and shoulders like a wet raincoat. Their arm and torso stubbornly remained on their legs, which was probably a good thing for Stark. It wasn’t a long way down to fall, but Eddie once knew a guy who broke his neck falling two feet. It was all about the angle. Speaking of which: “What are you doing here?”

“I was getting sushi.”

_Lying._

“Right now, I’m trying to get a hang of you. You realize you were being pretty obvious back there?”

“Obvious?”

“Yeah. You… your friend, however that works, was just licking random people.”

“You did it to more than one person?”

_People are tasty._ Venom pulled back a little, defensively. Stark yelped as the arm that held him collapsed. His armour formed out of thin air - was that nanobots - and he flipped mid-air to let it stabilize him. “I just wanted to talk!” He held his hands up. “Just talk, all right?”

“Oh yeah? By knocking me unconscious?” By tearing me apart?

“Hey, that was an accident! I pushed you into the alley, you fell, that… thing came at me, so I blasted it, and it took off. So I ran after it.”

“That thing,” Eddie glared, “is a person.”

“Okay, noted; I assumed as much.” Still holding his hands up, he let a glove form on one arm, carefully nodding to the protrusion on the underside. “High frequency sound. Non-lethal, incapacitating.”

“Not to him, you bastard!”

_He hurt you, Eddie. I didn’t have time to fix you, he had noise. Bad noise, I had to run. Would have died inside. Sorry. Tried to lure him away. Tried to save us._ Eddied hugged themselves, with his arms as well as from the inside. He was almost all Eddie, now, just their powerful legs remaining.

“It’s okay. I-” this was true, he realized, and fuck Stark, he could stand to hear it. It probably wasn’t a concept he was familiar with. “I love you.”

Stark tilted his head. “You…” he waved a hand. “You two are, uh…”

“Leaving.” Their legs settled into high military boots, supporting Eddie’s still-sore feet.

“No!” Stark gestured, placatingly. “Wait. You two are internet famous, you know that, right? And not just for your day job.” He made a different gesture, and a video appeared in mid-air: Venom, on their bike, speeding off in the dark. Scaling the bridge, jumping between support beams like it was a jungle gym. “You’re an outlier. An unknown. I don’t like this; I like knowing things.” He shrugged, looking smaller than he usually did on screen. Well, didn’t everyone? “I can’t plan if I don’t have data. Plans are good.” He looked down. “They save lives.”

_Plans are boring._ Venom roiled in him. No, Eddie tried to think back at him, the man has a point. We’re the good guys; we shouldn’t be running from other good guys. _He’s a good guy?_ Yes. Wait. You heard me?

Stark coughed. “I’m sure you’re having some sort of internal couple’s fight, but whenever you’re done, get in touch, would you? You’re a journalist,” he grinned at Eddie, “you know how to find me.”

Before Eddie could respond, Stark had melted into the surroundings. There was the faint sound of jets taking off, somewhere close.

_Couldn’t eat him anyway,_ Venom sulked. _Full of metal bits. Machines. Urgh._

Eddie sighed. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

 

* * *

 

 

“You really do have to stop licking people.” Eddie peeled his last sock off - literal last, they hadn’t done laundry in a while - and collapsed onto the bed. In a moment or two he might consider getting under the covers.

_Why?_

“Like I said, you gotta ask first. Not everyone wants to get licked by some random guy.”

_I’m not a guy._

“Fine; man, whatever.”

_Not a man, Eddie. I am Venom._

Eddie shifted a little. In his brain; their brain, difficult, alien concepts settled. Not male. Not female. Just… being. To exist, to live, always in flux. The relaxing feeling of settling into someone, adopting their sense of self, but not entirely losing your own. “Woah.”

_This is me. Us. We are us too, Eddie._

“I love you,” Eddie said, feeling it. Knowing it. His hand ran down their body, Venom flowing through and out of it, running between his fingers. He wasn’t touching himself, not even when, eventually, he collapsed in the sweet release of orgasm.

_They_ were.


End file.
